~ Village Teacher – The Book & Photographs

Frozen Magnolia Winter

This winter has really been the coldest we have experienced. On some days, when I left the house to go to work, the temperature has been as low as -5 F (-24 C). I have had to replace my car battery one night, and the AAA man who came to replace it said they never ever had to replace so many batteries in one month.

Here’s a photo of a branch of our yellow magnolia tree encased in ice. I hope the flower buds will survive and bloom again this spring.

Magnolia in ice

The animals of course have to find food any way they can. I saw the deer below nib at one of our neighbor’s tree. If you look closely you’ll see that it has lost one of its antlers. This is normal, and the remaining one should fall off eventually. Around this time of the year, deer shed their antlers, which will regrow in the spring.

Deer with one antler.

I put out sunflower seeds and managed to take pictures of some cute birds.

Chicadee

Junco

Our backyard cardinals were not to be seen. Maybe they got offended by the post I wrote the other day.

Jerry, I recently discovered hand warmers and just ordered a big box of them. They help keep not only hands warm, but also camera batteries. A couple of weeks ago, I took the camera out to take pictures of some eagles hovering in the sky. Within less than a minute a minute the camera battery gave out even though I knew it had at least half of its charge. Since then I’ve read that camera batteries should be kept warm, maybe in a pocket next to a hand warmer, until one is ready to shoot.